And we are here staying Amid these stale things Who care not for gaying, And those junketings That used so to joy her, And never to cloy her As us they cloy! . . . But She is shut, she is shut From the cheer of them, dead To all done and said In a yew-arched bed.
HE does not think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him know That whither his fancy sets him wandering I, too, alertly go?— Hover and hover a few feet from him Just as I used to do, But cannot answer his words addressed me— Only listen thereto!
When I could answer he did not say them: When I could let him know How I would like to join in his journeys Seldom he wished to go. Now that he goes and wants me with him More than he used to do, Never he sees my faithful phantom Though he speaks thereto.
Yes, I accompany him to places Only dreamers know, Where the shy hares limp long paces, Where the night rooks go; Into old aisles where the past is all to him, Close as his shade can do, Always lacking the power to call to him, Near as I reach thereto!
What a good haunter I am, O tell him, Quickly make him know If he but sigh since my loss befell him Straight to his side I go. Tell him a faithful one is doing All that love can do Still that his path may be worth pursuing, And to bring peace thereto.
WOMAN much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever consigned to existlessness, Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward And the woman calling.
I COME across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more: I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train, And need no setting open of the long familiar door As before.
The change I notice in my once own quarters! A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be, The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered, And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea As with me.
